But from the power to teach only, he inferreth also a coercive power in the Pope, over kings. The pastor, saith he, must give his flock convenient food: therefore the Pope may, and ought to compel kings to do their duty. Out of which it followeth that the Pope as pastor of Christian men, is king of kings: which all Christian kings ought indeed either to confess, or else they ought to take upon themselves the supreme pastoral charge, everyone in his own dominion.
His sixth and last argument is from examples. To which I answer, first, that examples prove nothing: secondly, that the examples he allegeth make not so much as a probability of right. The fact of Jehoiada, in killing Athaliah (2 Kings 11), was either by the authority of king Joash, or it was a horrible crime in the high priest, which ever after the election of king Saul was a mere subject. The fact of St. Ambrose in excommunicating Theodosius the emperor, if it were true he did so, was a capital crime. And for the Popes, Gregory I, Gregory II , Zachary, and Leo III , their judgments are void, as given in their own cause; and the acts done by them conformably to this doctrine, are the greatest crimes, especially that of Zachary, that are incident to human nature. And thus much of Power Ecclesiastical; wherein I had been more brief, forbearing to examine these arguments of Bellarmine, if they had been his as a private man, and not as the champion of the Papacy against all other Christian Princes and States.